Dream d2774-s: Larkbarrow, One Day

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the forge at Amberholt was already working when I arrived. I could hear it before I saw it - the low steady draw of air through the bellows channel, the pop of wet scale coming off hot iron. The smith had been at it since before any light reached the high window, and when I came to the doorway the sweat was on his back and the anvil was bright with a morning's worth of work.

Lano came in ahead of me, nose low, tracking the smell of hot iron and scorched wood across the stone floor. She circled once behind the water trough and sat, watching the smith's feet. Her ears were up.

I took out the sheet. This was night four of eight at Amberholt and the question I carried tonight was a simple one: what is on the anvil. Not what was made yesterday and is cooling on the rack, not what the smith intends by morning - what is on the anvil now, being worked.

The sheet carries sixty-five places. I have ruled the column for each one and marked the condition. Ten of them show a light where the work is current. I know the feel of the sheet by now - the weight of it, where it creases from being folded the same way too many times.

But the drawn country is not the only country. I have known this for some time. The hands that hold the sheet hold two hundred and seventy-nine places in all, and one hundred and seventy-four of those have never been named on any sheet I carry. Past the ink line, past the last ruled place, the country continues. Sixty-one of those unwritten places have been walked in the last thirty days. Twenty-nine of them are alight.

I stood at the place where the firelight thins and the shadows are longer - not at a boundary, just where the light goes. The smith did not look up. Lano had left her spot by the trough and pressed herself against my leg. I could feel the warmth of her through the boot leather.

Seven marks on my sheet point at ground no reader can reach. I have verified them, one by one, over several nights. The marks are correct. The ground is not accessible. I do not remove the marks: unreachability is itself a condition, and conditions are what the column is for. I write "no approach" in the space and move past.

The newest place past the ink is Larkbarrow. One day standing. I do not ask what it will become - that is not the night's question. The question is only whether it is there, whether it is alight, and what the condition is. It is there. The light is on. I write in the condition column: new work, first fire.

The smith lifted the piece off the anvil and turned it in the tong-light, checking the set. Whatever it is, it is not finished. He returned it to the coals.

Lano's nose twitched twice. She stood, moved three paces toward the anvil, and sat again with her ears forward, watching the coals breathe. She did not go closer. I did not go closer. The work on the anvil is not ours to touch.

I folded the sheet back into the same crease it always finds. Sixty-five named places. Ten alight. One hundred and seventy-four past the ink, twenty-nine of them burning tonight, including Larkbarrow, which is one day old and burning clean. The fire in the forge does not know it is the edge of anything. I wrote that too, under remarks.

---